K12 Education Technology Discussion with Jim Heynderickx

I’ve been spending some time on the new Independent School Educators Network (ISEN) at http://isenet.ning.com/. It’s been fun to “social network” with some long-time colleagues, and ponder what a social networking site can do.

The site just reached 200 members, even though it only went live last Thursday. There are developing groups, discussions, file libraries, video clips, images and notes passing back and forth. At the same time, though, there’s also some “figuring out” what the direction of the site is.

The twitter feed on the main page is interesting, in that I hadn’t followed before how one might add little ongoing notes to a group share. Some, or maybe most, are inconsequential, and maybe that isn’t a bad thing. The successful online communities I’ve enjoyed over the years have been a combination of the serious and the non-serious. It’s fun to learn about others’ personalities and lives– we can’t just be sharing facts and serious opinions all the time.

Meanwhile, my son Doug is outraged I’m typing this, as he thinks it’s time to wrestle. Well, he asked for it!

Each time I twitter, I think of the Ning site and have some fear of the person who I ming be interviewing with in the future mentioning something about how I misspelled a word or shared a personal frustration about a meeting running over. But, the twitter community keeps me coming back. It’s that blend of the personal and professional, plus the limit on text (so I know I can keep up) that is compelling. I would love to see you there. I’m here: http://twitter.com/alexragone.